Introduction to Pastry

If there’s one thing to always remind me of childhood, that would be freshly baked bread. My grandma was the baked of the family, she would knead kilos of dough at a time and make bread for the entire family. She had this clay oven built by her own hands and she would make the…

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Is there anything better and tastier, smoother and more delicious than salted caramel sauce?! I would be inclined to say that nothing tingles my senses quite like a teaspoon of salted caramel sauce. It’s sweet, it’s intense and just slightly salty, enough to make you crave for one more teaspoon. And before you know it,…

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For the longest of times I would avoid making vanilla pastry cream, but after recently experimenting with choux pastry, choux a la creme and eclairs, I felt like it was time to give pastry cream another chance. I used to find it too thick and dense in the past, but this recipe turn my world…

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What a fancy name – choux au craquelin! But what does it mean you may ask. Let’s put it this way – imagine a choux pastry (cream puff), topped with a crunchy topping, greatly named craquelin. It does sound good, isn’t it?! But let’s start with the very basic, shall we?! And that’s CHOUX…

Working with hot sugar is not an easy task and there are pastry chefs out there who specialize on this particular part of pastry, taking it to whole new levels of edible art. It does take practice to reach perfection, but most of all, it takes care and safety measures because the sugar reaches incredibly…

Click pentru limba romana Salt We all know what salt tastes like and how adding it to a recipe influences the taste, but salt is more than just a seasoning or flavor enhancer and it has a far more important role in some recipes than you might think. When I first started baking, I thought…

Gelatin is part of a pastry chef’s life as much as sugar, chocolate or vanilla are, especially when you’re making entremets or creams that require a stabilizer. Gelatin is used in many confectionary products, from the very simple marshmallows to jelly bears, gum paste, mousse, cremeux or stabilized whipped cream. It can also be…

Warning: don’t read this post if you’re hungry! It damages your sweet tooth! I have never hidden my love for chocolate. I like using it in my desserts, either as part of the filling or as a decoration, I like eating chocolate desserts, I like admiring them. But I think it’s the same with every pastry chef…

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Being a pastry chef is the most wonderful job in the world if you have passion, determination and a touch of talent, plus patience and a lot of knowledge. But if the first four of them come naturally, the last one comes only by reading, reading and when you though you’ve learnt enough, read even…

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Food Hygiene and Personal Hygiene at your Work Place – Pastry Chef I was going to talk about something else today, but then I realized that any chef course starts with the most basic of the basics – food hygiene and safety and how to avoid contamination of your food. Being a professional chef or…

Who doesn’t love cupcakes?! These tiny desserts look amazing and are loaded with so much flavor! But let’s look more at the history behind these stunning desserts and what sets them apart from one another! It’s muffins vs cupcakes time! Cupcakes, also known as fairy cakes, were first mentione in 1828 in E. Leslie’s book called…